Tradition can be a wonderful thing. You gather your family on special days and turn them into a magical annual festival that hums along so well that your clan does not want it to ever stop.

But a Mud Bowl tradition?

What is this all about?

It used to be called the Snow Bowl when it was conceived 50 years ago in Spokane by a few ex-Shadle Park High School athletes and two guys – Franke Etter and Bob Minnix ‑ who were on full football scholarship at Notre Dame.

These guys had a yearning to throw the football around, tackle somebody and work up an athletic sweat, even if it was in the dead of winter over the Christmas break and the ground was covered in white.

So in 1968 a group of Spokane young men led by Larry Tuke and Ed Fisher (who would later coach South Kitsap into a state football power) climbed through the barbwire fence that guarded Joe Albi Stadium in Spokane and started a football tradition that held its 50th edition this year on Super Bowl Sunday at Linder Field in Silverdale, where it has been played since 1982.

"High noon on Super Bowl Sunday on the field is when the game starts,” said Mark Hartman, who was pulled into the game 16 years ago by Tuke, with whom he coached baseball and worked at Morgan Stanley. “There is no reminder to the participants. They have been doing it so long it’s like the lemmings and the sparrows returning to Capistrano. They just show up on Super Bowl Sunday at high noon.”

When it first started, the guys played tackle football and called the game the Snow Bowl, because Spokane gets a lot of it in the winter. But now it’s two-hand touch and it's called the Mud Bowl because, well, Linder Field is usually wet and muddy, although this year it was not.

The architect of this competitive madness is Tuke, also nicknamed “Boots” because he played the saxophone like Boots Randolph, famous for the “Nashville Sound." Tuke is approaching his 70th birthday this year.

Tuke started playing recreational basketball at Misson Creek in Belfair when he arrived in the region from east of the mountains and continues to play it on Monday nights at Central Kitsap Middle School with others who are too old to know they probably shouldn’t.

Terry Mosher(Photo: file)

He is also an avid golfer who not long ago played his way across the country with son Logan Healy-Tuke, including at Pebble Beach. He is listed as the top racquetball player, based on participation and percentage of wins, among 63 players at the Kitsap Tennis & Athletic Center.

Brother Greg Tuke, who has played in the Mud Bowl for 46 years, also revealed Larry does 69 push-ups three times a week.

“He’s doing his age and doing it to keep in shape,” said Greg, adding, “He’s always been driven to do really well and is award oriented.”

You would have to be driven to be a senior and play in a game where it is almost a regular experience to see Achilles tendons, hamstrings and bones get ripped or broken. Larry Tuke actually wrote an entertaining opus about this and the lead went like this:

“As the warrior gingerly stepped toward his front door, his spikes piercing the floor’s hard tiles, he heard his wife call out: ‘Wait a minute, Pete!’ Believing he was about to receive a good bye hug from his honey before heading out to battle, he hesitated for her. ‘Thanks,’ she said, ‘I just wanted to see what you’re wearing so I can identify the body for them later.’”

According to Larry Tuke, there have been 23 trips to the hospital in the 50 Mud Bowls. But, he writes, “despite broken legs, concussions, shoulder separations and the usual assortment of hammies and Achilles tears, there is something that keeps this annual football battle alive – competition, camaraderie and commitment to the contest.”

I’ve always wondered what drives Tuke, who is a community treasure with his wife Brooke Healy for the good causes they invest in time, effort and money, and for their interest in getting the most out of life in general.

“My brother and I grew up in a Spokane neighborhood our dad called Poverty Flats,” Tuke said. “He drilled it into us that we would have to earn anything we ever got and constantly prove ourselves in a harsh, pressure-packed world where the decks were stacked against us.

“I learned to love competition, having teammates – and winning.

“This desire fed my drive to win school elections, academic honors, and carried on into my two professions. As a psychologist, I always believed my clients could achieve 100 percent success. For 12 years I dedicated myself to that belief (although in reality no therapist that I know ever actually came close to 100 percent).

“Athletics is simply a measurable and (ordinarily) healthy way to push myself and test my limits.”

So why the Mud Bowl?

“I think I like the look people give me when they learn a guy who is 70 this year enjoys playing head-to-head football with 20 and 30 something’s.”

This year’s Mud Bowl included the Prince brothers, Jordan and Jared, who both coach at North Kitsap where they also played. Jordan was declared the MVP this year with two touchdown receptions and two pick-sixes (both off Jared).

It also included Hartman, whose son Cooper missed it this year because he works in San Francisco; Logan Healy-Tuke; Dave Kludt, who drove in from Seattle so he could play for the 36h time; Chris Richardson, who threw three TD passes and ran for another; and Rodney Hitchcock, who lasted one play before limping off with a hamstring injury.

Kludt, 64, used to work at Kitsap Mental Health, where Tuke was at the time. That connection got him playing not only in the Mud Bowl, but Monday night basketball with the guys.

“I suffered two heart attacks and severed both of my Achilles playing Monday night basketball, so I finally hung up my sneakers,” said Kludt, who briefly played baseball in the San Francisco Giants baseball organization. When he moved to Spokane for five years, he would drive over to Silverdale just so he could play in the Mud Bowl.

Jordan Prince said it was pretty humbling playing football on Linder Field.

“It was sunny, but there was goose poop everywhere on the field,” Jordan said. “I had to wash my clothes.”

Jared, who is a teacher and an assistant football and baseball coach at NK, has competed in four Mud Bowls and does it for the thrill of competition. Even his fiancée (Adriana) played, recording a couple of sacks and putting an impressive spin move on Greg Tuck when he unsuccessfully tried to block her.

This Mud Bowl thing will likely go on for a long time. Cooper Hartman will soon join his dad at Morgan Stanley in Silverdale and Logan Healy-Tuke is living in Silverdale, so the family connection probably will keep this alive for some time.

“Logan and Cooper should take it to another 50 years,” Hartman said.

Terry Mosher is a former sports writer at the Kitsap Sun who publishes The Sports Paper at sportspaper.org. Reach him at bigmosher@msn.com.